Someone tweeted this the other night. Not to me, but just to the world in general. Isn't it beautiful? I was walking to the shops the other day, going through my usual thought process and I tried to remember everything that I was thinking.
I don't know what normal is. What normal means to me and what it means to you won't match up. I think that normal is mediocre, common and beige. I hate normal. I actively avoid it. I don't want to do anything the same as how someone else is doing it.
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| Photo PAUL CLARK |
My mind is - according to my husband (who knows me best) - a mysterious place. Also, it changes faster than the boys to a Kinderjoy. My heart can be a warm, friendly & loving place full of sun and shine. Skip a hop-scotch and it's dark, cold and completely wanting. There is no in-between. Call it bipolar, call me crazy, weird - give it any label or negative connotation you want but I really do love who I am. I love the fire, passion and energy that comes with it. I don't scour away from heated arguments, I embrace a good cry, I love a good pitch, brief, campaign and I am devoted to working hard and being a fun mom. My sometimes crazy means that I bunny hop around the house with the boys. We lay in the dark as I make up ridiculous bed time stories, put on funny voices and try scare them. When my heart is happy, I love with all of it and I am the kindest, most generous person you've never met. When I'm hurt... I can be venomous. The relationship between my dispositions is hardly amicable and sometimes it's a tough circus to master. I'm a little bit of everything, and always in extremes.
I talk about myself and who I am quite easily because knowing exactly who I am and what I want is a recent development for me. I (cross my heart and hope to die) don't consider or put any value in what other people think about me. That trauma was reserved for my early twenties and I'm grateful its over. As long as my favourite humans know how incredibly much I love them, then I'm good.
I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore.
So someone tweeted that quote up there and I was walking to the shops and trying to analyze and diagnose myself (as I do). I was trying to remember everything that I was thinking as I walked the block from my house and it went something like
I think I could home school the boys. The British do it. It's quite royal. I wonder how hard it is.
Why did they stop making banana Nesquick?
I should send Bethany some Nesquick and an old cassette of Pipeline or something
Do they still make old Nintendos?
I wonder if the boys will like Tetris as much as I did
No they'd drive me mad. I couldn't home school them. What about sports?
I need to stop threatening them with boarding school
Obs is so dodgy sometimes. These people freak me out.
If someone tried to kidnap me right now, what would I do? How would I tell all the other people on the street who I am? Would I shout out my name? My address? Graeme's name?
I need to teach Noah my phone number
Is 4 too young to have a cellphone? Wait is Noah 4 or 5 now? *counts on fingers* no he's 4.
Is sushi really wrapped in seaweed? Like from the ocean? Or is it 'pretend' seaweed?
I think allll the time, I think about everything. Sometimes I hate being around people as I'd rather be thinking by myself somewhere. I generally don't like people. The thought of having to attend a social event or be confined within a space with a bunch of people that I need to make small talk with, completely devastates me. I like my own company and my family. Put me in a social situation and I might be one of the loudest and friendliest people there but you'll have a very hard time getting me out the house in the first place. It's just that everyone you meet is exactly the same and like the same things and it's getting harder and harder to find interesting people nowadays, don't you find? Everyone is either in advertising or design. Everyone cuts their hair at the same place, the same way. Studied the same thing, went to the same stupid private schools and all have the same friends. Everyone blogs. Likes Scandinavian and red velvet and chevron and vintage and the boys all have beards and dress like woodsmen but probably can't even lift an axe. Everyone is in a band or has a friend in a band and all this weird underground music or they're trying to be famous somehow, especially on YouTube.
I guess I'm angry with people for wanting to be the same and wanting to fit in and I'm angry at people for getting their priorities mixed up all the time. I'm angry that I don't find anyone interesting anymore and I'm disappointed that so many people lead such safe lives; and I'm jealous that they're satisfied with it. I worry about how accepting everyone is about the things that we do and how anesthetized we've become to news and reports of pain, hunger, violence, rape, child abuse, slaughtering of animals and I'm languished that we're all letting this happen.
Stop it Natasha.
I think that quote is really beautiful and I do believe that all the good writers and great authors of the world and in history are some kind of batty. I do think that you need direct access to a personally experienced trauma to be able to write with soul. You need to be drunk and disillusioned with emotion. You need to be truly unsettled and have a lot of heart if you want to bleed words on to your keyboard. My best work has come at times when I've been at different levels and chambers within Rock Bottom. I've started writing poetry again. You won't know this, but my poetry has been published in numerous anthologies and other publications. I am embarrassed about it and I have shown these pieces to less than 10 people in my life. I love poetry and I'm slowly starting to get in to it again. I'm taking up reading again, but lighter books with less influence. The latest poem I'm working on is titled "The Deepest Dark" that I wrote for someone that I really love.
I think that being a little bit moonstruck or having suffered some kind of traumatic experience - or just being a very raw and emotionally intelligent person, has a direct impact on your writing ability. You can't effectively describe pain if you haven't held your own shaking, weeping, breaking body. You can't write about life if you haven't considered suicide. You can't express anger if you haven't cried with bleeding rage and you can't write about love if you haven't had your beating heart pulled from your chest. You can't write about agony if you haven't cast earth on to the coffin containing someone you love. You can't communicate intrinsic happiness if you haven't felt excruciating despair. Being happy is easy ; but it's not enough. Not for me.
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| Photo PAUL CLARK |
While I was walking down the block and thinking about the home schooling and being kidnapped I thought that I really should start working on my writing, and train myself a bit more - investigate other styles and tactics. Keep learning. And just before I turned in to the shop and on to a new thought process I thought:
"I wish I was really crazy. A lot crazier than I am now. I wish I was like, insane. Imagine what a good writer I'd be then."